[Help] [Norway Campaign] [Masochist challenge]Can someone please beat this insane siege for me?

[Mattobro]

Well, to cut a not-so long story short, a whiles through my Norway campaign subduing the Danes, I have almost united Scandinavia. Problem is, the Danes have brought back their formidable crusader army from Jerusalem and have besieged a very important castle, with one of my biggest armies inside. I would just persevere and beat this myself, but I did infact beat this on my first try, so I know it's winnable. (I survived with 200 troops left mind you) but the game crashed on loading shortly after the battle. My following 6 attempts have all been unsuccessful.

The question I pose is; could one of you forumites download this save, and have a go at the battle for me? If you win, could you save on the following turn and post a link to that save back? It's winnable, I know it! But I've given up at this point after it crashed in the loading screen after victory...

Statistics are:
Wooden castle
1800 (Norway) vs (3000) Danes
Norway has a bunch of Viking Drenjars, Supplemented by Spear militia, One unit of Landsmenn, One unit of light cav, Norse archers, and one severely depleted Huscarl unit.
Denmark has a mix of Viking Huscarls, Spear militia, Crusader foot knights and spear miltia, and drenjar. They also have one unit of catapults.
It's winnable I tell ye'! Someone help me out and you'll have my eternal gratitude in saving my campaign?
Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/tw...egeNorway3.sav

(I don't know if this is violating forum rules or not; if it is i'm very sorry, please do not ban me. I'm just asking for help.

[Hidden Sage]

I'm not aware that there's any rule violations there. However, we DO need to know what the setup of your game is. Early era/late era campaign, SS6.3 or 6.4, use of BGR or other submods, etc. Save file can't be loaded if the client isn't set up the same. I'd love to help (it does sound like a very doable fight), but I'm not quite patient enough to try all possible combinations of submods until I find the matching one.

[Andytheplatypus]

You could just cheat. Thats what I do if I win a battle and it crashes.

[poisoned goat]

Challenge accepted, if you tell us what your settings are, like what Hidden Sage said.

Edit: Managed to load it up. Now to test my mettle.

[poisoned goat]

Well battle completed. Crushing victory. The Danes stood no chance. http://www.mediafire.com/?8a09yhc50h5r2k0


Battle deployment: There were four units of norse archers, meaning mass stakes. It's easy to win battles when the opposing general decides that spiky pieces of wood are good to charge against. The Danes had catas so there was no point in holding the walls (although they didn't breach the wall in the end, fantastic AI).


Once battle started, I moved my norse archers to better positions. The crappy spear militia were there to keep the enemy blob in place while the archers did their thing.


They made mincemeat out of the infantry blob.


After the infantry blob routed and the archers had no ammo, all that was left were the Danish reinforcements, that were idling on the walls. Since the time limit was turned off, I had to send the remainder of the infantry (which was almost all of them) to clear them up. Easy job. Final outcome:



PS: I left a few surprises in the save game.

[Mattobro]

Well battle completed. Crushing victory. The Danes stood no chance. http://www.mediafire.com/?8a09yhc50h5r2k0

Wow, thank you very much! The overview of what you did helped alot, very informative. I've took mental notes of that to use in future siege battles. I never thought of using the Archers stakes, nor holding the town instead of the walls for one, my spear militia would get creamed on the walls everytime. You have my eternal gratitude for getting me out of a sticky situation and saving my campaign.

[Mattobro]

You could just cheat. Thats what I do if I win a battle and it crashes.

Nah, if I start cheating, I cannot stop. I'm refraining from cheating as best I can.
I felt like doing a good old hot-seat esque save swap seemed appropriate, to see if someone else could best my admittedly mediocre siege battle performance.

EDIT: I was also using no submods at all, just the default AI and watchtowers. No BGR or the like.

Consider this challenge done. Feel free to have a go at my save of course, but poisoned goat wins it.

sorry for the double post.

[Strengelicher]

I am interested in something the OP mentioned in his last post: What is a "hot-seat esque save swap"? How do you do it, and what are the consequences?

[k/t]

You do your turn and send me the save, then I play my turn and send you the save, then you do your turn again.

"Nah, if I start cheating, I cannot stop. I'm refraining from cheating as best I can."

Using stakes and holding the plaza is cheating too.

[Hidden Sage]

Using stakes and holding the plaza is cheating too.

Both of those are a matter of opinion. Not denying that both are stupidly powerful tools (anti-cavalry slaughter and infinite morale), they are at least designed into the standard game engine. Console command cheats bypass that engine for advantages the AI is unable to obtain at all. Which is to say, there's cheating and there's cheating.

Besides, stakes are a terrible idea in city battles. Cavalry sorties to trash the infantry holding ladders and siege towers are the easiest way to keep men off your walls, and stakes will cut off your retreat. Only a good idea if you either no cavalry AND no pike/billhook infantry.

[MDCCLXXVI]

Both of those are a matter of opinion. Not denying that both are stupidly powerful tools (anti-cavalry slaughter and infinite morale), they are at least designed into the standard game engine. Console command cheats bypass that engine for advantages the AI is unable to obtain at all. Which is to say, there's cheating and there's cheating.

Besides, stakes are a terrible idea in city battles. Cavalry sorties to trash the infantry holding ladders and siege towers are the easiest way to keep men off your walls, and stakes will cut off your retreat. Only a good idea if you either no cavalry AND no pike/billhook infantry.

Whenever I have cav to spare on defense like that, I always run them around to a side gate to enter, with a unit of spears to greet them and shake off any pursuers. Too often I've had the gate get "stuck" open when returning, and the enemy pours into the open gate.

I don't think stakes at the gate are cheating at all.

1. It would have been done in real life as well, including any number of nasty traps around the city would make life very hard for a mounted enemy.

2. It only really demonstrates a frailty in the AI, that the enemy would see the stakes and charge them into certain death anyways. Whoever programmed the AI gave the "sprint through gate" script a higher weighting than the "walk through stakes" script.

IMO, the AI should be scripted to do the same thing, if the faction has archer+stakes within the settlement during a seige, get them to put the stakes in front of the relevant gate. Its only fair




Just recently I lost one of my first legit offensive siege battles against egypt. I made a few tactical blunders in my attack and the enemy took full advantage of them.

ie. i left my ballista behind as i moved into the citadel. the AI sent out a sortie behind me to kill them.

ie. i attacked the gate with a ram but left my supporting troops too far away (taking cover from ballista towers). the AI sent an excellent sortie and killed them/destroyed the ram.

ie. they fought a great tactical withdrawal battle. When I took a wall they wouldnt stay to fight, like I wanted. Instead they fled back to the next level, manned the towers and waited. In the end they destroyed a ram, so I had to go alllll the way back to the start position for a spare ... by then it was too late.



At the end of the battle I was smiling, shaking my head and clapping my hands.

I greatly outnumbered the egyptian defenders and got smashed.



With scripting like that, it should be possible to get the AI to put stakes at the likely gate of entry, or near the central plaza.